R.I.P Susan Saint James, Kate & Allie and McMillan & Wife star

The 80-year-old actor died on Monday of pancreatic cancer.

By Dennis Perkins  |  October 27, 2026 | 12:53pm
Screenshot: SNL/YouTube
News News Susan Saint James
R.I.P Susan Saint James, Kate & Allie and McMillan & Wife star

Susan Saint James, Emmy-winning TV and film star of the 70’s and 80’s has died, according to Variety. She was 80. A statement from her family calls Saint James “generous with her time and energy, which she valued more than money, and instinctively drawn to whoever needed lifting up. She taught her children to pause, be kind and look out for other people.” The statement adds, “She never met a stranger. Every person she met became the most important person in the room at that moment, from a fellow board member to the clerk at the shoe store, who usually walked away knowing her entire life story.”

The husky-voiced former model and actor got her first big break in her first role, playing gal Friday researcher Peggy Chan (later changed to Peggy Maxwell) to Tony Franciosa’s investigative reporter in the 1966 TV movie Fame Is The Name Of The Game. Saint James reprised her role in the subsequent series The Name Of The Game, for which she won a Best Supporting Actress Emmy in 1969. Saint James was nominated for a further three Emmys for her five-year stint alongside Rock Hudson in the popular NBC crime series McMillan & Wife before appearing in such films as 1977’s Outlaw Blues with Peter Fonda, 1979 hit vampire comedy Love At First Bite being romanced by George Hamilton’s Count Dracula, and 1980’s recession comedy How To Beat The High Cost Of Living alongside Jessica Lange and Saturday Night Live‘s Jane Curtin. 

It was Saint James’ connection to Curtin and SNL that led to two of the actor’s most pivotal personal and professional moments. After hosting Saturday Night Live in 1981 following Curtin’s departure, Saint James met and quickly married then SNL producer Dick Ebersol, with whom she had three sons, Willie, Charles, and Teddy. Teddy died in a 2004 plane crash in which his father and brother Willie were seriously injured. She also has daughters named Harmony and Sunshine with makeup artist Thomas Lucas, from whom she was divorced in 1977. 

Saint James and Curtin reunited for the influential sitcom Kate & Allie from 1984 to 1989, in which they played a pair of recently divorced single mothers who decide to live together. A critical and ratings hit for its groundbreaking portrait of independent single motherhood and the chemistry of its stars, the series famously faced controversy about Saint James’ Kate McArdle and Curtin’s Allie Lowell’s living arrangement to the extent that CBS mandates scenes of them sleeping in separate bedrooms to prove they weren’t lovers. 

After Kate & Allie‘s cancellation, Saint James largely retired from acting, making infrequent one-off appearances on shows like The Drew Carey Show, Law & Order: Special Victims Unit, and Suits, her (final onscreen credit) in 2011. 

Saint James died of pancreatic cancer on Monday. She is survived by Ebersol, four children, and seven grandchildren. She is also the aunt of Shrinking actor Christa Miller.

 
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